Pa 



no 



62d Congress) qi^watt? i Document 

Sd Session / bi.iNAii. ^ No. 930 



SUGAR BEETS 

IN NEW ENGLAND AND THE 

FREE SUGAR BILL OF THE 

SB 221 

P2 HOUSE OF REPRE- 

'Opy 1 



SENTATIVES 



LETTER OF 

TRUMAN G. ^PALMER TO HON. HENRY CABOT LODGE 
CONCEI^NING THE PRODUCTION IN 1837 AT 
NORTHAMPTON, MASS., OF THE FIRST BEET 
SUGAR PRODUCED IN AMERICA, AND THE 
ADAPTABILITY OF NEW ENGLAND CONDI- 
TIONS TO THE PRODUCTION OF BEET SUGAR 






PRESENTED BY MR. LODGE 
August 16, 1912.— Ordered to be printed 



WASHINGTON 
1912 



i 

4 






SUGAE BEETS IN NEW ENGLAND. 



Washington, D. C, August 10, 1912. 
Hon. Henry Cabot Lodge, 

United States Senate, Washington, D. C.^ 

My Dear Senator: The country needed no new evidence of the 
fact that your views on national economy are not bounded by State 
lines or colored by the New England hills. Nevertheless, when, 
without a cane or beet sugar factory within 500 miles of jouv State, 
you espoused the cause of the domestic sugar industr}'^ of Louisiana, 
the Middle West, and arid America, you gave the country fresh evi- 
dence of your interest in the welfare of all the people. 

Although now producing maple sugar only, the State of Massa- 
chusetts has the distinction of being the first in the Union to pro- 
duce sugar from beets, since grown to an industry of such proportions 
that American farmers and other toilers of the Middle and far West 
depend upon it for .545,000,000 of their annual income. And so, 
when your political opponents proposed to blot out this industry and 
transfer it to foreign lands and a handful of New York refiners, it 
seemed fitting that it should be defended by the senior Senator from 
the State which gave it birth 73 years ago. 

While in the early days the industry did not thrive in New England 
or elsewhere in America, permit me to suggest that no climatic or 
other natural obstacle prevents its successful establishment through- 
out New England. Also allow me to observe that the most effective 
manner in which to obliterate the term ''abandoned New England 
farms" is by establishing the beet-sugar industry in their midst, for 
wherever sugar beets are planted, v/orn-out soils become rejuvenated 
and fallow and abandoned fields become fertile. 

In 1839 Mr. David Lee Child erected a small beet-sugar factor}^ at 
Northampton, Mass., in wliich was produced the first beet sugar 
made in America. Following is an extract from the 1839 report of 
the second exposition of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic 
Association : 

D. L. Child, Northampton. Beet-root sugar, crude and refined. Manufactured 
by the improved process of Schuzenbach. The crude or raw sugar is well made, 
dry, and of good grain. The refined shows that this article can be made of as good 
quality as sugar from the cane. Of the extent of the manufacture by the exhibitor 
the committee are not informed. A silver medal. 

The medal bore the following inscription : 

The Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association. Award to David Lee Child, 
for the first beet sugar made in America. Exhibition of 1839. 

3 



4 SUGAR BEETS IN NEW ENGLAND. 

The same year the Massachusetts Ao-ricultural Society awarded 
Child's company a cash premium of $100. The language of the 
society was as follows: 

Premium of the Massachusetts Agricultural Society, 1839. To the person, persons, 
or corporation who shall manufacture from the sugar beet, sugar in the greatest quantity 
and of the best quality in the year 1839, giving a full and particular account of the 
process of manufacturing it, a premium of $100. 

This premium was awarded on the 5th of December, 1839, to the Northampton 
Beet Sugar Co. 

Mr. Edward Cliurch was associated with Child in this enterprise. 
Church, an American, lived in France for many years, where he made 
a careful study of the sugar industry, with a view to erecting a factory 
on his property near Paris, but because of the chaotic conditions 
which succeeded the French Revolution he returned to Northampton 
and joined Child in his enterprise. 

In 1837 Church issued a 54-page book. Notice on the Beet Sugar, 
from which I quote: 

AVe look with confidence to our Legislature for everysupportand encouragement which 
our infant enterprise can fairly ask. The liberality extended to the indigenous silk 
producers will not, surely, be withheld from us, for if there is any one undertaking which 
deserves the special patronage of a wise and paternal Government it is one like ours, 
which emmently promotes our first, best, and most permanent source of wealth and 
comfort — agriculture. * * * 

It is proper here to remark that by the beet culture a new and important article of 
food is created without in any manner diminishing the usual production of grain or 
the feed for stock, but, on the contrary, materially increasing them both, as it is pecu- 
liarly fitted to take the place of the fallow or to alternate with crops of grain, and thus 
essentially facilitate a good system of farming. 

In this anticipation of increased prosperity to our country in general from the pro- 
duction of indigenous sugar there is nothing fanciful or exaggerated, and it is especially 
applicable to our own New England, whose hardy and enterprising sons are yearly 
and daily deserting their firesides in pursuit of fortune in the far West, whilst their 
own native soil, endeared by so many associations, contains mines of wealth which 
only requires to be sought to be found. * * * 

To conclude, no doubt can possibly remain on a thorough and candid investigation 
of the subject that the introduction of the beet culture and its manufacture into sugar 
is destined to ci'eate a memorable epoch in the prosperity of our Republic, not infe- 
rior, probably, to the cotton culture, and having over that some preeminent advan- 
tages, therefore to consider it only as a means of i-eplacing a foreign product by one of 
our own growth would be to take a very narrow and inadequate view of the subject. 

CAUSES OF EARLY FAILURES. 

As with other pioneers, the causes which led to Child's lack of suc- 
cess were numerous. The beets in France contained but 10 to 10^ 
per cent of sugar, Child's even less; machinery was crude, the entire 
plant representing an investment of but a few thousand dollars; 
much of the work was performed by hand, making it expensive to 
operate; technical knowledge was limited, and but one-half to two- 
thirds of the sugar was recovered. The price of beets was but $2.75 
per ton in France, while Child, with his crude plant, paid $4 per ton. 
Child knew what the culture wouhl do for the farmers, but the farmers 
did not. They demanded more for their beets than he could afford 
to pay, and, like other pioneers in the industry, he w^as compelled to 
give up the struggle. 

To-day the average sugar content of American beets is 16.35 per 
cent; the investment in the factory buildings and machinery is from 
$500,000 up; the smallest ])lant slices 400 tons per day. They extract 



SUGAE BEETS IN NEW ENGLAND. 5 

tlie maximum amount of sugar; all the labor is done by machinery, 
the hand of man never touching either the beet or its product from the 
time the beets are plowed and topped in the field until the retail 
grocer opens the sack to weigh out the sugar. No product could be 
more cleanly and sanitary. To-day the price of beets in the United 
States ranges from $5.50 to $7 per ton, depending upon the situation 
of the factory and the sugar content of the beets, and some factories, 
having contracts for all the beets they can slice, are compelled to refuse 
offers for thousands of additional acres. • 

ERRONEOUS CONCLUSIONS. 

Because of early failures in Maine, M9,ssachusetts, New Jersey, 
Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Wisconsin, followed by success in Cali- 
fornia, the belief became general that sugar beets only would thrive in 
that State. Later, the Department of Agriculture determined that 
in a northerly belt which extends from the Atlantic to the Pacific, 
there are 274,000,000 acres of well-defined sugar-beet land, and if but 
one of these acres out of each 200 were cultivated to sugar beets, the 
$100,000,000 which we now send abroad annually for the purchase 
of sugar, would be paid to American farmers and other toilers. After 
the enactment of the Dingley tariff bill in 1897, capital rushed into 
the industry and plants were erected as far east as Binghamton and 
Rome, N. Y. Through lack of capital and technical knowledge, dis- 
couragement overtook some of the managements before success 
crowned their efforts and several modern plants were removed from 
New York and IMichigan to the far West. To-day the farmers and 
tradespeople and the capitalists who sunk their fortuius, regret the 
hasty action which deprived them of an industry which now would 
be a success and add pros]:)erity to the entire community. Beet 
sugar now is produced in 70 factories, situated in 16 States. 

RICHER BEETS IN. NEW ENGLAND THAN IN THE WEST. 

Not only have we an abundance of sugar-beet land in the United 
States, but you have it in New England and there is far less reason 
for your people to send away $20,000,000 a year for the purchase of 
the sugar they consume, than there would be to go elsewhere for the 
purchase of cotton cloth, machinery, silverware, or brass gooels. 
They can not grow the cotton or mine the metals, biit they can both 
grow the sugar beets and extract the sugar, thereby becoming pro- 
ducers instead of merely finishers. 

As you perhaps are aware some years ago both the Department of 
Agriculture and the State agricultural experiment stations made 
many thousand tests of sugar beets grown in various parts of the 
country, in order to determine what territory was best adapted for 
their culture, and it is Avithin the territory where these beets gave 
favorable results that factories since have been located, which now 
annually distribute $45,000,000 to neighboring farmers and laborers. 
Some of the New England States showed remarkable results, but that 
fact was lost sight of, and the $100,000,000 which has been invested 
in the industry during the past 17 years has been placeel in the West, 
where 70 factories now turn out an annual product valued at 
$60,000,000. 



6 



SUGAE BEETS IN NEW ENGLAND. 



In 1900 I tabulated the results of 30,430 analyses made by the 
Department of Agriculture and State experiment stations, classifying 
and averaging them by. States, and the significant fact was disclosed 
that the New England tests outranked those made in the West. 
My interests at that time being confined to the far West I also lost 
sight of these eastern tests until the}" were called to my mind in 1906, 
and they then were laid before Senator Gallinger, of New Hampshire, 
and the Secretary of Agriculture, both of whom were enthusiastic 
over the prospect of establishing the industry in New England. But 
for the illness and final death of the department field official who was 
delegated by the Secretary to conduct an exhaustive line of new 
experiments, the probabilities are that to-day New England would 
be producing a portion if not all of her sugar requirements. 

The tabulation of early experiments conducted in New England 
and in Michigan, Colorado, and California, the three States which 
since have become our greatest sugar producers, is as follows: 



Purity. 




Massachusetts. 1890, 6 tests; 1898, 4 tests; 1899, 9 tests 
New Hampshire, 1891, 1 test; 1898, 2 tests; 1899, 4 tests 
Vermont, 1897, 8 tests; 1898, 68 tests; 1899, 16 tests 

California, 93 tests, covering 7 years 

Colorado, 536 tests, covering 7 "years 

Michigan, 959 tests, coverLag 7 years 



Average of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont 
Average of California, Colorado, and Michigan 



82.9 
81.5 



As will be observed. New England excelled in both tonnage and 
purity and was but fractionally lower in sugar content. A sugar beet 
of 13.5 per cent sugar and 82.9 purity will yield considerably more 
sugar than a beet of 13.8 per cent sugar and 81.5 purity, and hence the 
advantage was with the New England States, rather than with the 
three Western States in which the iiidustry since has become one of 
the most important wealth producers they possess; 290,000 acres of 
beets yielding them a product valued at $35,000,000. Had the 
industry developed in accordance with these tests, New England 
would have added her quota to our domestic production of sugar, and 
her farm lands also would have doubled in productivity and value. 

New England has the soil, the climate, the capital, the people, the 
home market and practically there would be no freight charges in 
distributing the ]jroduct. If, as the cotton industry moves South to 
get closer to the cotton fields, your operatives could be given remunera- 
tive employment in beet fields and sugar factories and gradually 
become land owners, as do the laborers and renters in the West, their 
condition would be improved instead of injured by the change. The 
West is thankful for the New England capital and brains which have 
helped to develop its sugar and other industries, but here are green 
fields with wealth-producing possibilities, right at their doors. 



NEW ENGLAND HAS THE AEEA. 



Some have said that there is not a sufficient area of cultivable land 
in New England to establish such an industry, but in 1910, New 
England had 568,000 acres in corn, wheat, barley, rye, and buckwheat, 



SUGAR BEETS IIST :NEW EXGLAND. 7 

and nearly one-half as much more m potatoes. As 5,000 acres' of beets 
is sufficient to suppl^y the average modern beet-sugar factory, New 
England has an abundant acreage with which to build up an extensive 
sugar factory. The land need not adjoin or lie close to a factory. 
In the West, the major portion of the beets are shipped in by rail, 
sometimes as far as 100, and even 200 miles, but the usual area is 
that covered by a freight rate of 50 cents per ton, which generally 
covers a distance of 40 to 50 miles, giving an 80 to 100 mile radius 
from whence. to draw the supply. 

NEW ENGLAND CROP YIELDS ABOVE THE AVERAGE. 

Others have said that the soils of New England are too poor^to 
produce beets, but this opinion is not well grounded. New England 
farmers have nothing of which to be ashamed and everything of which 
to be proud when comparing their yields with the average for the. 
United States, for of wheat, rye, barley, oats, corn, potatoes, and other 
crops their average yield far exceeds the average for the United States. 
Denmark, with the poorest soil and agricultural climate in Europe, 
not only supplies its people ^\dth the sugar they consume, but is build- 
ing new factories aiicl preparing to export sugar. Establish the beet- 
sugar industry in New England and soon some of her 4,000,000 acres 
whicli have gone down to hay will be brought back to tillage, as were 
grasslands in Europe. 

NEW ENGLAND NOT TOO FAR NORTH. 

Others have said that New England, and especially Maine, is too 
far north to produce sugar beets, but the sugar-beet areas of both 
Denmark and Sweden are 600 miles farther north than is the northern- 
most point of Maine, and in Sweden the farmers are so anxious to 
grow beets that the factories have a greater supply than they can 
use. They are compelled to employ inspectors, whose business it is 
to see that farmers do not deliver beets from a greater acreage than 
their contracts with the factories call for. The Canadian factory in 
Alberta is far north of Maine, as also are the two factories recently 
erected in Manchuria. The general belief has been that sugar beets 
would not thrive in the northerly damp, cloudy climate of Great 
Britain, but they produce richer beets and more of them to the acre 
than are produced in Germany, and now are constructing their first 
modern factory. The richest sugar beets produced in the United 
States are grown in the vicinity of Billings, Mont., to supply the huge 
factory recently erected at that point, wliere so anxious are the farm- 
ers to grow beets that they offer contracts for thousands of acres 
beyond the capacity of the plant. 

EFFECT OF THE BEET-SUGAR INDL^STRY ON EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE. 

When this industry was introduced into Europe, one-third of the 
level lands were regarded as worthless, one-fourth of the fields were 
fallow, and the yield of cereals from the remaining fields was but 
12 bushels per acre. To-day rich and poor lands are under the plow, 
less than 5 per cent of the fields are fallowed, and the average yields 



8 SUGAR BEETS IN NEW ENGLAND. 

are far in excess of those wliicli are secured in the Mississippi Valley, 
the most fertile area ol like extent in the world. 

Of wheat, rye, barlev, and oats, Europe, without Russia, sowed 
156,000,000 acres in 1907 and harvested 4,000,000,000 bushels, while 
we sowed 85,500,000 acres to the same crops and harvested but 
1,500,000,000 bushels, our virgin soils returning but 18^ bushels per 
acre, wliiie the average yield from Europe's 100,000,000 acres of 
rejuvenated soil and 50,000,000 acres of soil which was regarded as 
worthless prior to the advent of sugar-beet culture, was 26^ bushels 
per acre. 

B}^ reason of the introduction of sugar-beet culture and the scien- 
tific system of rotation which it demanded, the combined yield per 
acre of these four cereal crops in Germany has reached 39 V bushels, 
an increase of 80 per cent in bushels per acre during the past 30 years, 
during which time the increase in the United States has amounted 
to but 6.6 per cent. This is what the introduction of sugar-beet 
culture has accomplished. 

WHY SUGAR-BEET CULTURE IMPROVES THE SOIL. 

Important as is tlie $60,000,000 annual product of the beet-sugar 
factories of the West, it is of minor account when compared to the 
rejuvenating effect which the culture of sugar beets has on the soil. 
The reason is simple. Consider the conditions in Europe. When 
sugar-beet culture was introduced their farmers were practicing 
what is known as the ''three-crop system" of rotation — three suc- 
cessive cereal crops, followed by one year of fallowing, in order to 
rest the soil and to enable them to pull out the dense growth of 
weeds by hand. They were plowing but 3 to 4 inches deep, and 
the fertility of the thin layer of locse surface soil was all but 
exhausted. The grain roots were unable to penetrate tlie hard 
soil underneath, and could they have done so it would have been of 
no avail, for, containing no humus and not having been aerated, it 
was not fertile. Being a deep rooter, a prerequisite to sugar-beet 
culture was that the soil be stirred to a depth of 8 to 10 inches. 
At the outset farmers in nortliern Europe rebelled at deep plowing, 
which each year turned up a new and abundant crop of stones to be 
carted off the fields, just as it would in New England. But once 
they saw the revolution produced in their yields of other crops, 
factories could not be erected rapidly enough to treat the beets they 
would grow. 

As in order to leave but one beet in a place, the tender beetlet has 
to undergo the shock cf thinning soon after it comes up, the sugar 
beet demanded a well-prepared, mellow seed bed. Gathering the 
sugar in its leaves from the atmosphere by the aid of the light and 
storing it up in the root, it would not gatlier the maximum amount 
of sugar if tlie light were cut oft" through being shaded by weeds, 
and the eradication of the weeds meant not only a further stirring 
of the soil by cultivation and hoeing, but that they were removed 
before going to seed, thus leaving weedless fields for succeeding 
crops. 

Being plowed out in the autumn gave an extra fall plowing, which 
left the land in condition to absorb instead of shed the fall and 



SUGAR BEETS IN NEW ENGLAND. 9 

winter rains and store up the moisture for the foHowing season's 
crop. 

With the removal of the main root, myriads of fibrous roots are 
broken off and left in the" soil to an average of a ton to the acre, and 
in rotting they not only deposited humus in the lower strata of soil, 
but left minute channels tlu'ough which it became aerated, and hence 
fertile. The roots of subsequent crops followed these interstices and 
drew nutriment from two and tlii"ee times the de])th of soil formerly 
reached, and hence the farmers doubled and trebled their soil with- 
out increasing their acreage. It all seems very simple, but it has 
taken us a long time to realize it, and some of our farmers still are 
in ignorance. 

A large portion of Germany is but a sandy i)lain, and her enormous 
crop yields are due to the fact that for each 3 acres of cereals grown 
her farmers raise 1 acre of hoed crops, thus producing a root crop 
on each field every fourth year. They grow sugar beets wherever 
possible, and are the greatest producers of this vegetable in the world. 
So thoroughly do they a})preciate the influence of a root crop on the 
yield of other croj)s that in sections where there are no factories to 
which they can sell their sugar beets the}'^ grow beets or other root 
ci'ops and feed them to stock, as they do in Great Britain. But 
where there are sugar factories, the farmers secure the double advan- 
tage of first selling the crop for sugar, and then hauling its full feeding 
value back to the farm in the residue. For this reason, farm lands 
and rents are much higher in the vicinity of sugar factories than 
they are elsewhere. 

One of the many advantages of this industry, one which even yet 
is not fully appreciated in the West, was thoroughly appreciated 73 
years ago by David Lee Child. In his book, Culture of the Beet and 
Manufacture of Beet Sugar, pid^lished in Boston in 1840, ]\Ir. Cli'ld 
said: 

It is supposed that the soil of the West is peculiarly adapted to the beet. We 
have no doubt of the fact, and that the beet sugar, as a manufacturing concern, will 
be more profitable there for some time than in any other portion of the country, 
partly from the distance of the great markets and partly from the chea]iness of land 
and fuel; but we doubt whether any part of our territory is destined to be more bene- 
fited by it than the New England and other States, which have hard and poor lands 
and a lack of m.anure. In the West, as we are informed, manure is not an object of 
importance to the farmer except as creating a nuisance and causing expense and 
trouble to move it out of the way. Nay, we have heard that farmers in that region 
often abandon their log barns and build new ones rather than renKjve the manure 
to the gulleys; but in New England manure is the life and soul of agriculture. If 
the beet-sugar business can boast of any advantage more particularly preeminent, 
it is the multiplication and improvement of live stock and manure. This will be in 
a great measure lost upon the West, while it will be precious 1-eyond calcidation to 
the North, and very valuable to some portions of the South. 

What Child wrote about the value of barnyard manure 73 years ago 
is true to-day, as it was then, since with all the advance in agriculture 
and chemistry no satisfactory substitute has been found for barnyard 
manure. 

BENEFICENT AGRICULTURAL EFFECTS ARE IMMEDIATE. 

It does not require a century in which to rejuvenate worn-out soils. 
Results quickly follow the establishment of a beet-sugar factory and 
have from the beginning of the industry. Child cited M. C^respel, one 



10 SUGAR BEETS IN NEW ENGLAND. 

of the foremost French agriculturists of his day, who was laiightecl by 
the French King and several foreign sovereigns for his contributions to 
agricidtural science. He was the owner of numerous farms in north- 
ern France, and, testif^^ng before the Chamber of Deputies in 1837, he 
said : 

The culturo of the beet has increased remarkably the value of real estate. I lately 
purchased, at the rate of $152 per acre, some lands which were let at .$3.80 an acre. 
Since I have cultiA'ated these lands mth beets in a rotation of crops, the number of 
sheep kept thereon has doubled and the neat stock has trebled. The rents of lease- 
hold property has doubled where the land was of middling quality, and in some 
cases they have quadrupled . 

These results have been duplicated in the United States wherever 
the beet-sugar industry has been established. The Department of 
Agriculture conducted an inquiry which covered the increase in farm 
values from 1900 to 1905. The inquiry reached every township in the 
United States and the results showed that where sugar-beet culture 
had been introduced land values had risen to a, much greater extent 
than in other sections, and that in sections where sugar beets were 
produced the increase in the value of the farms on which sugar beets 
were grown was much in excess of those in the same localit}^ on which 
sugar beets had not been grown. 

In California, Colorado, Utah, Oregon, Michigan, and Nebraska, 
the average increase in the value of nonbeet-producing farms from 
1900 to 1905, was $13.90 per acre, while the average increase in the 
value of farms in the same States on which sugar beets were grown, 
was $32.97 per acre or nearly three times as great. In discussing the 
influence of sugar-beet culture, the Secretary of Agriculture says: 

From the best information I have it may be stated: The beet-sugar industry, where 
installed, has been one of the most potent factors developing agricultural conditions, 
not only in sugar production, but in all agricultural features associated. Especially 
is this true in the semiarid West. In this section the ordinary beet-sugar plant neces- 
sitates an investment of at least a million dollars for buying the land, erecting the 
building, procuring equipment, producing the facilities for irrigation, transportation, 
and other features necessary for successful work. 

The capitalization of such a plant and the building of the same is the incentive for 
projecting many other improvements, subsidiary, but important to agricultural 
development, such as the dairy, creamery, breeding of animals, feeding and preparing 
the same for market, also the fruit industry, cereal and alfalfa production, the alfalfa- 
meal mill, canneries, preserving fruit, and many other things made possible by the 
existence of an enterprise capable of capitalizing all farm productive conditions and 
promoting extensive farm cooperation in many ways. 

As this industry develops in the West, it is the main feature attracting and supiDort- 
ing many things and uniting them in an intensive agricultural husbandry. As it 
works out in the West, it is the "mother lode " of agricultural development. It is and 
will continue to be the most important medium developing the benefits and promot- 
ing the success of our national reclamation act. 

Through its by-products in the older States it has asserted a strong influence on 
agricultural interests. It has stimulated the animal industry and the consequent 
products of the same. 

Its effect on the value 'of lands is quite varied, according to places and conditions. 
In all ])laces of the United States its fa-\'orable influence in this respect has been quite 
marked. Examine conditions in mountain States where crops are grown by irrigation, 
formerly used for grazing, lands worth from $3 to $b per acre. A sugar factory, the 
means and incentive of an irrigation ditch, has made these lands available for produc- 
ing sugar beets, the finest fruits, the products of dairy and creamery, the fattened 
animal for the block; and when thoroughly eq\iipped for these purposes lands are 
worth from $100 to $300 per acre. * * * 

In the old farm districts of the Mississippi Valley and farther east, Ohio, Wisconsin, 
Michigan, etc., rent charges have generally doubled, quite often trebled with the 
introduction of the sugar factory. It must be presumed that land values would 
follow such influences in a like degree. 



SUGAR BEETS IN NEW ENGLAND. 11 

The effect of the beet-sugar industry "on local business generally" has been very 
pronounced. Where installed, it has remarkably recouped and energized all kinds 
of local business. It has revived and made over towns already established. In places 
where towns did not exist it has made new ones which have become important centers 
of trade. * * * 

The sugar industry has had a remarkable influence in the stimulation, elevation, and 
improvement generally of the live-stock~ interests. This has occurred in bettering the 
breeds, increasing the number of stock, and multiplpng the productive resources of 
the stock industry. It has turned vast areas from simple grazing to stock production 
for all purposes; from producing the "stocker" to producing a good quality of meat 
for consumption; also dairy and creamery products and breeding fine blooded animals 
of different kinds. 

The sugar industry in extending, promoting, and increasing the facilities for agricul- 
ture, in creating a demand for rotation, fertilization, a higher, better knowledge of 
conditions, resources, and application of methods, has very much extended and pro- 
moted the production of all other crops. * * * ^ 

From every consideration another potent influence due to sugar-beet culture is the 
fact that it requires rotation of crops. Wherever it is adapted it is not a rival of other 
farm productions. It adjusts itself to a systematic cycle of rotation, no matter what 
be the list of other natural crops. It is not only not a rival of these other productions, 
but logically it must have them, and promotes them for its own best success. In the 
older factory districts, this fact is one of the first observable benefits due to the culture 
of sugar beets. 

EA^ery sugar factory management in this country must necessarily caU to its aid a 
thoroughly scientific and practical agriculturist, and under him a corps of assistants 
equipped and conversant, not only with cultivating sugar beets, but familiar with 
methods of culture, fertilization, drainage, rotation, and all the necessary scientific 
knowledge to produce successfully all kinds of crops indigenous to the particular 
locality. This agriculturist and his assistants are constantly traveling over the sugar- 
beet producing district of this particular factory, advising farmers particularly in the 
growth of sugar beets, and generally in the production of all other crops. They are 
as much interested incidentally in the handling of the lands producing other crops as 
they are particularly the one in charge. It is these other lands that will produce 
sugar beets next year. 

A sugar- factory district is an "extension course" in agiiculture to every farmer in 
the district, whether he be growing sugar beets or not. It could not be conceived, 
with such influence constantly in operation, that the sugar industry is not exerting 
a potent influence most favorable in production of all crops. 

AVERAGE INCREASED YIELD OF OTHER CROPS AFTER BEING ROTATED 

WITH SUGAR BEETS. 

During the past three years I have corresponded with hundreds of 
American farmers throughout the sugar-beet producing States of the 
West concerning their experience in growing this crop in rotation 
with cereal crops. Universal enthusiasm is expressed by them, and 
115 of the number were able to state their acreage yields of other 
crops before and after rotating them with sugar beets. The average 
results obtained by these 115 farmers were as follows: 

Average yield. 





Before beet 
culture. 


After beet 
culture. 


Per cent 
increase. 


Wheat 


28.88 
41.60 
40.90 
38.97 
151.97 


4.3.07 
.53. 10 
50.60 
.59. 40 
222. 20 


49.1 


Corn 


27.6 


Oats 


48.1 




52.0 




46.0 







12 SUGAR BEETS IN NEW ENGLAND. 

In arid America the culture of suo:ar beets and alfalfa are agricul- 
tural necessities, for they scarcely can grow and transport low-priced 
products to eastern markets in competition with the Mississippi 
Valley; but turning their alfalfa into stock and their sugar beets into 
sugar, they have products of such value that the freight does not eat 
up the profit. The necessity in New England is for a crop which will 
rejuvenate its worn-out soils and bring them back into tillage. Europe 
accomplished it with sugar beets; New England can accomplish it in 
the same manner. 

EARLY FAILURES IN THE UNITED STATES. 

In view of the possibility of the sugar beet becoming the means of 
the revivifying of New England agriculture, allow me for a few-sen- 
tences to call to your mind the truly strange career of this humble 
vegetable in this country, where half a century ago every investor in 
it sunk his fortune. 

In 1835 it started on its serpentine course of disaster at Philadel- 
phia, where two Germans, Vaughn and Ronaldson, built the first 
factory. From Philadelphia it wound its way up to Northampton, 
Mass., where David Lee Child erected a little factory and was assisted 
by the French consul at Boston, M. Isnard. As stated before, they 
also failed. 

From Northampton it migrated to Portland, Me., where the fac- 
tory failed because the farmers starting for the factory with a load of 
beets were oft'ered more for them for cattle-feeding purposes than the 
factory, with its crude equipment, was able to pay. Since that time 
the sugar beet has been bred up to contain 16 to 20 per cent of sugar, 
and had they secured such beets as New England can produce to-day, 
and had they possessed the half million dollar equipment of ma- 
chin.'ry since invented, and wdth which all American beet-sugar fac- 
tories now are equipped, they could have doubled the price paid for 
beets and thereby have secured an ample supply. 

In 1852 this would-be industry wandered across the plains to Salt 
Lake City, where the Mormons imported the machinery from France 
and hauled it overland from Omaha by ox teams. From there it 
returned to the East, to.Chatsworth Park, 111., to Freeport, 111., to 
Black Hawk, Wis., to Fond du Lac, Wis., east to New Jersey, and 
then headed west again, traveling across the continent to California, 
where it wandered up and down the coast for several years, and 
finally, at Alameda, Cal., in 1879, E. II. Dyer brought success out of 
50 years of failure and losses of $2,000,000 in sOven different States. 

From that time on, its course reminds one of the discovery of gold 
at Cripple Creek, where miners had tramped over the precious metal 
for years, in ignorance of its existence. The westward course of 
disaster in the beet-sugar industry was to be succeeded by an eastern 
course to be crowned with success. 

The failure of 1852 in Utah became a success in 1891. Wisconsin's 
early failures turned into success in 1901. The Illinois failures of 
1863 and 1870 became a success in 1905. The 418 recent tests made 
in Pennsylvania which showed an average sugar content of 12.66 — a 
purity of 81.8 — and a tonnage of 15.63— would have brought unlim- 
ited success to Vaughn and Ronaldson if they had possessed the 
necessaiy knowledge and equipment. 



SUGAR BEETS IN NEW ENGLAND. 13 

Who dare assert that PortLnnd, Me., or Northampton, Mass., 
which latter produced the first beet sugar hi the United States, shall 
not in the near future become the seat of a prosperous sugar industry 
and reap the reward wliich the pioneers deserved but failed to secure? 

CONTRAST IN GOVERNMENT POLICIES. 

The industry was not out of its swaddling cloths when our beet- 
sugar pioneers went down to defeat. But the rulers of Europe per- 
ceived its value to their national economy and nursed it, with the 
result that they now produce as much sugar as is supplied by the 
Tropics and, having doubled the supply, have lowered the price of 
sugar for the world. 

While Europe's policy .of encouragement to the beet-sugar industry 
has been steadfast, that of the United Stateg, if it has had a policy, 
has been wavering and unstable, legislators seeming to be ignorant 
of the indirect agricultural advantages to be derived from producing 
our sugar supply from beets. Even in the present day when the high 
cost of living is absorbing the attention of every consumer, rich and 
poor, little or no heed is paid to tiie fact that tlie general introduction of 
this industry would double the yield of our^ fields and the stock- 
carrying capacity of our farms, and while enriching the farmer, would 
lower the price of food commodities, thereby benefiting every con- 
sumer in the land. 

THE HIGH COST OF LIVING. 

Our best western Government lands largely have been absorbed, 
and tlie country youtli of the West, unable to secure attractive home- 
steads, is flocking to British America in ever-increasing num])ers. 

While the producing class of the West is being drained of its best 
blood, the consuming class of the country is being increased by the 
immigrants who land in New York and flock to the cities rather than 
to the country. 

Our western ranges have l)een broken up, and as a result of the 
decline of the cattle-grazing industry, within the past week beef cat- 
tle on the hoof at Chicago sold at tlie highest figure reached since the 
Civil War. 

Our agricultural imports in 1910 exceeded those of 1900 to the 
value of $267,000,000, an increase of nearly one-third. During the 
same period the valueof our exportsof breadstuffs fell off $130,000,000, 
or 50 per cent. The value of our exports of animals declined from 
$43,000,000 in 1900 to $17,000,000 in 1910, or 40 per cent, while the 
value of meat exports declined $15,000,000. The value of our exports 
of all agricultural products except cotton has fallen from $600,000,000 
in 1900 to $420,000,000 in 1910, which is $266,000,000 less than the 
value of our agricidtural imports. Not including cotton, the United 
States has become an importer instead of an exporter of agricultural 
products. 

Our increase in the production of farm products is not keeping pace 
with the increase in the number of consumers. Unable to supply 
fresh lands to settlers and unable to attract people from the cities to 
the farms, to what must we have recourse? To an increase in the 
crop yields of the fields which already are under cultivation. And 



14 SUGAR BEETS IN NEW ENGLAND. 

how best can this increase be assured ? By adopting a simple method 
which involves no expense, a method which never has been a failure, 
but on the contrary, has been an unqualified success in every country 
of Europe. , 

With all the agricultural science we have employed and all the 
virgin lands we have added to our cultivated area, our combined yield 
per acre of wheat, rye, barley, and oats has been increased but 6.6 
per cent chiring the })ast 80 years, while' Germany, through the intro- 
duction of sugar-beet culture, has increased its average yields of the 
same crops SO per cent during the same period, and now of these 
crops secures an average }deld of 39.45 bushels per acre from her 
rejuvenated soils, as compared to our average yield of 21.6 bushels 
from the virgin soils of the United States. 

These results are not confined to Germany. The thinking men of 
Europe have accomplished their purpose through introducing and 
extending the beet-sugar industry to a point where not only does 
continental Europe supply its 400,000,000 people with all the sugar 
they consume, but with an annual surplus for export, valued at 
$175,000,000, while the United States continues to import sugar to 
the value of $100,000,000 a year and to cultivate 18 acres of land in 
order to secure as many bushels of grain as Germany harvests from 
10 acres. 

In this connection the fact is worthy of note that none of these 
nations encouraged the domestic production of sugar because of a 
belief that it could be produced at home more cheaply than it could be 
imported from the Tropics. The cost of the sugar was, and is, of 
secondary importance. One and all encourage and protect their 
domestic sugar industry, because of the incalculable benefit which 
comes from the increased yield of other crops through rotation with 
sugar beets. 

WTiile we have been speculating as to the wisdom of certain scien- 
tific treatments of the soil and how much this or that fertilizer would 
add to the yield and to what extent the farmer could employ it with 
profit, Europe has solved the problem of crop yield by merely adding 
a new crop to the rotation, a crop which more than pays for itself 
and hence involves no added expense. The experience of a century 
has demonstrated the fact that the general introduction of sugar- 
beet culture would solve the problem of the high cost of meat and 
breadstuffs. 

Inasmuch as New England is in the sugar belt, inasmuch as her 
soils would be so greatly benefited by adopting beet culture, and 
inasmuch as her great dairying interests need the rich by-products 
for stock food, it seems little short of criminal that some of the New 
England capitalists who have invested in western beet-sugar factories 
should not have started the industry in their native States. 

And now, if at last, by the aid of modern technical and agricultural 
science, the modest sugar beet can be made to reclaim the abandoned 
farms of New England, we will reverse the phrase and say, "Eastward 
the star of empire takes its course." 

Your views on national economies embrace the struggling industries 
of the West and South, and if I have been of service in directing your 
attention to the economic importance of this industry for your section, 
or can be of assistance in its establishment therein, I shall be most 
happy. 

Sincerely, yours, Truman G. Palmer. 



sugar beets in new england. 15 

Dr. Paasche, Vice President of the German Reichstag, on the 
Influence of Sugar-Beet Culture. 

Herr H. Paasclie, Vice President of the German Reichstag is one of 
Germany's foremost thinkers and is a recognized authority on sugar 
and sugar-beet culture. He is the author of The Worki's Sugar Pro- 
duction, a voUime of 338 pages which for years has been considered 
a standard ])ubKcation throughout the sugar workl. 

Dr. Paasche has visited the prmcipal cane and beet sugar pro- 
ducing countries of the workl, and in July last arrived in America on 
his fourth Adsit to this country. The Springfield (Mass.) Union of 
July 14 contamed a full-page interview with Dr. Paasche. The 
followmg editorial is from the Augusta (Me.) Journal of August 5, 
1912: 

It will surprise the average American accustomed to consider that his country's 
claim to supremacy as a food-growing nation is based on its yield of wheat and corn 
to be told that the United States will soon lead the world in the output of another great 
food crop, namely sugar. Yet this is the prediction of no less au authority than Herr 
Paasche, former vice chairman of the German Reichstag and prominently identified 
with the development of the German beet-sugar industry, who is now in this country 
on a tour of inspection. "The United States has every condition necessary to a great 
and rapid development as a sugar producer," said Herr Paasche, "it is the only coun- 
try, so far as I know, that can grow both beet and cane sugar within its borders. You 
have hundreds of millions of acres of land adapted to the growing of sugar beets. You 
have thoroughly up-to-date beet-sugar factories manned by experts, and you have here 
at home the greatest sugar market in the world. In a few years I expect to see you 
growing all the sugar required for your own use and possibly more besides." 

It was pointed out to the German leader that Congress might decide that it would 
be wiser to purchase our sugar supply abroad instead of growing it at home and might 
pass a free sugar bill to bring this about, but he declined to take this possibiUty seri- 
ously. "From selfish motives we would be glad to see that happen," he explained, 
"but you Americans are too clever voluntarily to give up the advantages yoii will 
enjoy from the building up of this industry. The use of root crops, particularly the 
sugar beet, in rotation with cereals is at the foundation of the great improvement in 
agricultural conditions that has taken place in Germany and the adoption of the same 
plan here will result in a vast increase in your output of all your principal farm crops." 



Extract from "Notes on the Beet Sugar," by Edward 
Church, Northampton, Mass., 1837. 

But an abundant supply at a cheap rate of a very essential article 
of consumption, important as it surely must be considered, is not the 
only advantage to which we are to look in the culture of the sugar 
beet. Every man who has the least knowledge of agriculture is aware 
how important to the improvement of the land is the introduction of 
a culture destructive to weeds; artificial meadows \vill not alone 
answer the desired object; weeded crops must form a part of a sound 
system, and it is to these that Flanders and some other countries owe 
their agricultural riches. The estabhshment of manufactories of beet- 
root sugar would unquestionably be the most efl"ectual means of 
introducing this, with the best rotation of crops, and producing one 
of those rare and happy revolutions in the prosperity of a nation 
which, if not thoroughly understood by contemporaries, will neverthe- 
less be noted by posterity as an epoch in its agricultural and com- 
mercial wealth. It must not be supposed that the benefits antici- 
pated \\all be hmited to the extent of territory necessary for the 



16 SUGAR BEETS IN NEW ENGLAND. | I I |||| ||i 

supply of the raw material for these manufactories ; o 002 685 736 
benefits of the root crops are clearly demonstrated, as they unques- 
tionably must be by the wants of the sugar manufacturer, farmers 
will see that not only beets, but potatoes, carrots, and many other 
varieties cultivated as food for cattle, offer an easy and profitable 
means of varying their rotations and supplying at the same time the 
largest possible amount of nutriment for their stock, and as a con- 
sequence the best way of producing manure in abundance and there- 
with ample stocks. That this has been the constant result of the 
establishment of beet-root sugar manufactories in France the sur- 
rounding country clearly shows; they not only confer a benefit on 
their neighborhood by the capital expended therein, but teach the 
inhabitants how they can employ this capital most usefully; the con- 
sequence is that a sentiment almost amounting to enthusiasm is now 
felt in that Kingdom in favor of these new undertakings. Russia, 
Prussia, Germany — indeed, the whole Continent of Europe — has 
awakened to the primary importance of indigenous sugar. With such 
examples before us can it be for a moment admitted that our 
country, with all its advantages of soil and climate and a people 
inferior to no other in enterprise and genius, should long remain 
behind the rest of the civilized world in the pursuit of an object so 
eminently important ? I have no such fear, but on the contrary a 
firm belief that if she was not tlie first in the race sh« will not long 
las behind. 



o 



. TRRORY OF CONGRESS 
002 685 73b J f<^ 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




0D0EbaS73fc,3 



Hollinger Corp. 
pH 8.5 



